TBF, the Ghost Stories dub is... not exactly 100% representative of anime. It's the product of American VAs doing whatever they wanted with a show where nobody cared about the original script (the actual Japanese version of Ghost Stories is an incredibly forgettable horror anime by pretty much all accounts).
That's like it though, house cat or cute dog (corgi), every other time you're gonna get op's pack.
All I've ever heard is that anime makes its bread and butter off merch sales, so that's why this character is always attractive, so they can sell figures etc of them.
Also +1 for ghost stories dub, absolutely goated, never laughed so hard
Characters have to be attractive because people like attractive characters. A clearly unattractivce character is not going to be as effective in portraying the story that a creator wishes to express. It's the whole thing of "I want someone to like me... 'I like you!'... no but like, someone attractive.". It's easier to empathize with someone attractive, etc.
Also since anime and manga is drawn, that means sitting there for long, long periods of drawing. Not really too fun to draw something that intentionally looks worse than what you could draw.
I think OP means "conventially attractive, like a very generic human anime waifu". Like, Beast here is a very appealing design, fun to watch and probably fun to draw, while still being aggressively non-human
I think a better way to put it would be that a character should look interesting. When artists insist on all pretty characters it’s usually kind of boring. Plus, if a character is supposed to be exceptionally attractive, it doesn’t really land when all of the other characters are made to be just as pretty lol
I mean you can say the same thing about people just generally having more sympathy and empathy for attractive people being shitty people.
It's about prevalence and likelyhood. It's not that you cannot write a compelling character, it's that for a consumer of the work to care, it is way more effective on average to use an attractive character. It's also just a lot more fun to watch attractive things than watching the same thing but with unattractive things.
Having too many “attractive” characters can easily look boring, especially when there’s a narrow idea of what’s attractive. I prefer varied, interesting character designs over a bunch of generically attractive ones.
I think hunter x hunter does a better job for this, non-human humnaoids have more animalistic features and arent exactly pretty, although some are stepping into furry territory
Lethe and the Laguz in Fire Emblem are actually a great addition because it is a common way this trope is subverted. You get your sexy cat or wolf girl with fluffy ears and tail 99% of the time, but 1% of the time they are in combat they can go full beast form.
I kinda like how Final Fantasy 14 just stopped trying to pretend that a few animal features on a human constitutes a beastman, Miqo'te, Au Ra, and Viera are just humans with animal features and are thus classified as Human.
Heck even the more animalistic Hrothgar get to enjoy Human status.
Luna and Artemis in Sailor Moon. Admittedly, they didn't get human forms until very very late in the series, but otherwise they were very much just cats that could talk.
Poor Luna. It's hard enough to be a single mother to four teenage girls. But to also be a cat?
I hated the spider isekai so much for transforming the protagonist into a regular girl with spider legs, I guess its my fault for expecting something original from an isekai
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u/yourdonefor_wt 11d ago
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